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Megan Quinn

Mike Abbott and Megan Quinn are two of the newest partners at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. They are charged with building the firm's digital practice and leading its next generation of investors.

Abbott was previously vice president of engineering at Twitter, and grew the engineering staff from 80 to 350 people, and was previously at Palm and and also started a company. Quinn was previously director of product at Square and before that was at , where she headed teams for products such as Google Maps.

As part of FORBES' Midas List coverage, we spoke with the two investors about why they joined Kleiner, how it met their expectations and what their plans are to get investments in top new startups. The following is an edited version of the interviews.

Megan, with so many different opportunities why did you choose to Kleiner?

As I was looking at different opportunities I really thought back to my experiences I had when (Kleiner partner) John (Doerr) was on the board at Google and (Kleiner partner) Mary (Meeker) was on the board at Square. They were--and this is not to discredit other board members--but they were by far the most helpful board members for the companies I was at and directly personally for me. At Google I had interaction with John and other members of the board but not at meetings. And a lot more at Square.

Second, was a more cultural thing. There are different models for how partnerships operate on Sand Hill. What I really like at Kleiner—having been at startups in the trenches with engineers--is it is extraordinarily collaborative. When Kleiner invests it’s not that there’s one partner who’s the lead and that’s the only person on the board. You really have the entire firm behind you. I liked this collaborative nature of investing. It’s very different from a lot of other partnerships.

And there was a defining moment for me. I was still trying to decide if I was going to come to Kleiner. I stopped by Path one Friday afternoon (in May 2012) up in San Francisco. And there were three Kleiner partners there, all in different meetings, all on different initiatives (Doerr, partner Chi-Hua Chien and recruiting partner Jordan Ormont). This is incredible--you might think this is a turn of phrase--they “roll up their sleeves.” This was a Friday afternoon. It was the summer. I was really impressed. That was a manifestation of that collaborative nature.

The third reason: Based on a lot of conversations I had with John and (partner) Ted Schlein, it was very clear that Kleiner was eager to undergo a generational shift. It was a shift they were excited about and embracing. They wanted to bring in the next generation of leadership here and start to cultivate people as leaders.

And they were refocusing and reorienting around Internet investments. That was an exciting opportunity. The Valley is about reimagining and rebirth. And to be part of Kleiner for the next decade or however long was a profound opportunity for me.

How has the firm met your expectations?

Kleiner is much faster-moving and more progressive than I would have anticipated. I thought it would be more: me pushing boulders. And being a little more of a pebble in a shoe--the model of startups that I was coming from in that world. I was surprised by how efficient and fast the partnership already operated. We could make several million dollar investment decisions very, very quickly. We could rally around initiatives very quickly.

I’m profoundly impressed with my partners. For example, Mary Meeker, as you'd expect, she is very analytical, Wall Street savvy. What you wouldn't expect is she’s an incredibly insightful product evangelist. When she makes investment decisions she makes time for using a product. With Square, she was sitting in the back of a car and signed up in a minute and thirty seconds and then could accept credit cards. She said, 'That’s magic, I'm investing.' She has this incredible product sensibility.

Mike Abbott

Mike, why did you join Kleiner Perkins?

I’m pretty self aware - I know what I don’t know. So my entire career I try to surround myself with people I can learn from. So John Doerr -- if you can learn from him--that’s pretty awesome or Ted Schlein. Part of my discussions before I joined was how much time would I get from John, like an apprentice almost to learn to be a great venture capitalist. I’m not doing this for fun. I’m doing this to be the best and I want to win. If you can learn from the best that’s pretty awesome.

The other thing that was compelling for me was looking at the generational transition going on--that there's a gap there. So there's an opportunity not just to learn, but also to be a key leader in that transition. I love that. I love change, I saw an opportunity.

Also thirdly, I saw the firm clearly had shifted its focus away from digital (in the past). I'd seen that externally. I talked with John. More important than why--was there enough courage to enable change (back to digital) to happen, to enable the firm to be great again? I felt after a set of discussions with him and others that we could go do that. I do know externally when I was an angel investor in Cloudera, I didn’t necessarily think of KP (as an investor) and that’s bad. We acknowledged it and (came up with) what was the strategy to change that.

How have you gone about changing things?

My experience in doing turnaround changes is you get new talent in and do a reset on what you focus on and what you de-focus on.